Ink and Water - Some More

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Larry Wolf, Ink and Water (2025)

Chip

Larry Wolf, Chip (2025)

Ink and Water - Memory and Desire

Larry Wolf, Memory and Desire (2025)

Larry Wolf - Memori Mori (2025)

Larry Wolf, Memory and Desire (2025)

Larry Wolf, April Desire (2025)

Larry Wolf, Memento Mori (2025)

Larry Wolf, M (2025)

No No

Larry Wolf, No No (2025)

AA Bronson and Eve Sonneman

These two photographs, part of a rotating display of works from the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, speak to my recent images which include mirrors and paired images.

General Idea (AA Bronson) - Mirror Sequences (1969)

General Idea (AA Bronson), Mirror Sequences (1969)
Art Institute Chicago, Photography and Media, Gallery 10

Discussion by AA Bronson: 

In 1968, when I began taking self-portraits, I was concerned with the body: more specifically, with my body, and with my body in relation to my friends' bodies. I had no other way to measure the world. Lacking an identity, or any way to judge my separation from others, I began with my physical self. This would later prove inadequate, but it was a beginning. 

http://users.rcn.com/aamark/mirrormirror/lookingglass/mirror1.htm

Mirror Sequences wall text in Gallery 10: 

In 1968, when I began taking self-portraits, I was concerned with the body: more specifically, with my body, and with my body in relation to my friends' bodies. I had no other way to measure the world. Lacking an identity, or any way to judge my separation from others, I began with my physical self...

-AA Bronson, 2002

Mirror Sequences is a self-portrait in which a convex mirror reflects and multiplies a fragmented body. The photograph was taken by AA Bronson and is credited to General Idea, an artist collective founded in 1969 by Bronson, Felix Partz (Canadian, 1945-1994), and Jorge Zontal (Italian, 1944-1994). General Idea would go on to create parodies of the art world and consumer culture and respond forcefully to the AIDS epidemic.

Eve Sonneman, Dusk (1979)

Eve Sonneman, Dusk (1976)
Art Institute of Chicago, Photography and Media, Gallery 10

Dusk wall text in Gallery 10:

To create this diptych, Eve Sonneman paired two images, taken moments apart, of tourists on an observation deck.

Their shadows, as well as the photographer's, loom large and draw attention to the darkening of the sky in the moment between the frames. By displaying images shot in rapid succession, Sonneman challenged the notion of the "decisive moment," a reigning idea in mid-century photography according to which the best picture is the one that entirely sums up a scene in a single instant. Instead, Sonneman suggests that photography can reveal time to be arbitrary and mutable, never fully frozen by the camera.

NYTimes Review (1982): https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/18/arts/photography-view-eve-sonneman-s-explorations-by-andy-grundberg.html 

On A Walk Today

Larry Wolf, Roots and Rocks (2025)

Larry Wolf, Reflections (2025)

Larry Wolf, Reflections (2025)

Larry Wolf, Reflections (2025)

Haunted

Larry Wolf, Haunted (2025)

Crack

Larry Wolf, Cup (2025)

Larry Wolf, Cup (2025)

Larry Wolf, Cup (2025)

Weeping Through a Deep Hairline Crack

Fragmented

Functional

Fragile

Fierce

 

 

Larry Wolf, Cup (2025)

A Year in Zines - 2024

Larry Wolf, A Year in Zines 2024 (2025)

I realized that most of these have not made it to my blog, so here's a very quick recap.

A Glimpse of History

Larry Wolf, March on Washington 1979 (2024)

Larry Wolf, March on Washington 1979 (2024)

After the 2024 election, I needed a reminder that I have lived in rough times. It's not new. So this zine of images from the 1979 March on Washington for LGBTQ Rights. Images from my archive. I was also there in 1987 and 1993. 

Within The Canon

Larry Wolf, In Conversation 2024 (2025)

For several months in 2024, Gallery 293 at the Art Institute was filled with works by queer artists who lived in New York in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. I learned of their cross-connections through my own research. These five zines, In Conversation, put me in dialogue with the artists: Greer Langton, David Wojnarowicz, Zoe Leonard, Martin Wong, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and others. There's a separate page about my explorations. 

Enfants Terribles

Larry Wolf, Enfants Terribles 2024 (2025)

Arthur Rimbaud and David Wojnarowicz shook things up in their time and for decades after. They lived almost exactly 100 years apart. Now together in a zine (and this earlier blog post).

A Summer Afternoon

Larry Wolf, Summer in Vermont 2024 (2025)

More from the archive and also a risograph version. We were young once, and in our hearts, always.

Dual Lens

Larry Wolf, Dual Lens 2024 (2025)

I've been exploring making images with a lens intended for 3D. I'm captivated by how the two lenses make a pair of overlapping images, the right and left sides similar and different. This is the first zine to hold those images. More are in the works (see also Dual Lens).

Compositional Sketch in Sumi Ink

Larry Wolf, Water and Ink (2025)

Larry Wolf, Water and Ink (2025)

Compositional Sketches

Larry Wolf, Sketches (2025)

Collage In My Lap

Larry Wolf, Collage in My Lap (2025)

Shared Queer Space

From 2003 - 2014 the house I lived in at 144 Powers was the central gathering point for socializing and artmaking and it really was my muse. I began photographing friends in the kitchen and backyard. I then moved to photographing in my bedroom, where the sheets and pillows where my friends sat became a recurring landscape and an important foundation for the work. So bringing some of these images into the Alice Austen House definitely resonates with that history of domestic portraiture, friendship and intimacy in a home which becomes a shared, queer space. ...

The mid-2000s, when I began my first portrait projects, when I was enmeshed within the Queer Zine revival, the debut of BUTT Magazine and its countless spin-offs, and the emergence of online social networking sites Friendster, Myspace, Manhunt and Adam4Adam.

I was distributing my work through zines and online, and the digital dissemination of the work immediately left the realm of my control and authorship. My interest quickly shifted from straight portraiture to the ways in which queer portraiture was being used and recontextualized, how the same portrait could serve both as artwork in one context and as solicitation in another.

... in retrospect, it is interesting how I found stability through the discovery of a history of photographic portraiture's relationship to literature. In literature the author and the subject more easily slipped, swapped places, lingered in the space where the roles co-exist.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, 

Artist Statement in the catalog for 144 Powers (June - September 2022)

Alice Austen House, Staten Island, NY 

A Note on the Photograph

The photograph is of the objects in my lap while flying home from a weekend in New York as seen by my dual-lens camera. 

The objects include the catalog for Paul Mpagi Sepuya's exhibition, 144 Powers, at the Alice Austin House, 2022. 

Fire Escape - Postcard from the Edge

Larry Wolf, Fire Escape - Postcard from the Edge (2024)

... because we need to have a place for important conversations when our lives, and the world, are on aflame ...

with inspiration from Ocean Vuong, The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation (Rumpus, 2014), my blog from 2020

Postcards from the Edge

This postcard was created for the annual fundraiser for Visual AIDS, seen here along with some of the 1583 other postcards donated this year.